


Finding

by CentrauGuardian



Series: Whole [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Dark, M/M, Not a happy fic folks, Unresolved, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 20:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8341795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CentrauGuardian/pseuds/CentrauGuardian
Summary: Everything culminates in this moment. In this moment where she's there and he's found her. So much pain and work and time and she's right there.Things can never be that easy though.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence. Allusions to torture.
> 
> I'm sorry. 
> 
> This skips ahead a lot, and, potentially, if people want the journey before we get here, this might not be the best thing to read. It's not nice, and it's not hopeful in the way the two one-shots leading up to this are. Just a warning folks.

Everything stops. It’s like he’s suddenly in a vacuum. All the sound and colours and breaths and sensations of the world around him disappear. Everything in him screams for this moment, this heartbeat. He looks at her and she sleeps, unaware of his proximity, unaware of his presence, his existence in the world.

He doesn’t know how the cracks in the glass start, can’t quite understand what the screaming agony in his fists means. She’s there. She’s in there and not out here.  
With him.

It’s so inherently wrong. Every atom in his body rages with it. She sleeps, suspended in fluid and ensnared in a tangle of wires and there’s a screeching, howling noise that vaguely sounds to him like alarms.

He doesn’t recognise the grip on his arm as Poe, as his friends, until it’s too late. He whirls and uses training he’d been trying desperately to forget. Fingers here, a foot snapping someone’s calf there. He’s broken his attackers before his brain catches up with reality, and suddenly he’s staring down at Poe scrabbling at his throat and choking, Flare screaming in pain and terror. He vaguely notices Pava curled around her leg on the ground beside him, but it’s Poe that takes up all of his attention.

Stormtroopers are trained to destroy, to murder those they come into contact with. They are not taught to gently disarm or disable.

Finn remembers the sensation of driving his knuckles into Poe’s windpipe abruptly, a rush of sheer horror electrifying his nerves, and he stumbles, hands reaching out to Poe to try and rectify what he’s done.

Snap has him pinned against the pods before he knows it; blaster shoved into the side of his neck as other officers run over to the downed pilots. There’s a snarl on his face and Spiral is snapping her wings above them both, her tiny starling body radiating anger and aggression.

It should be funny, he thinks vaguely. It should be funny, this tiny creature threatening violence if he tries to move again. It should be funny.

Poe’s gurgling in the background.

There’s shouting and people have swarmed Poe. People are trying to treat Pava as well but she’s screaming at them to tend to Poe; it’s just a broken bone, get Poe for kriffing hell’s sake.

Finn can’t see Poe through the mass of bodies surrounding him. There’s soldiers anxiously sweeping every angle of the corridor, well and truly aware that their stealth has been compromised. Medics are hunched over, moving frantically and exchanging terse words s packages are ripped open.

Above it all, Poe can still hear Flare howling. It’s the only thing that lets him know that Poe is still, definitely, alive.

It’s the most horrific and beautiful sound he’s ever heard.

Snap must see the moment Finn realises what he’s done; the blaster eases away from his neck slightly and Spiral drops down to rest on Snap’s shoulder, an anxious warbling marking her own fear. Snap cautiously releases his strangling grip on Finn’s collar and the sudden rush of air triggers something in Finn.

He finds himself slipping to the ground, back pressed against the gently humming pod behind him. He can’t stop staring at the medics, at the men and women desperately trying to save Poe.

Because Finn had killed him. Had rammed his knuckles into Poe’s throat so hard he collapsed his trachea. He hadn’t even seen Poe when he’d done it; hadn’t known he was crushing his world beneath his fist.

He looks down at his hands, seeing the dark blood coating them and the suggestion of shards along the sides of his clenched fingers. He tries to convince his mind to let them go, and every small movement is won through agony.

He vaguely remembers smashing at the glass pod; the outer layer of glass had not been strengthened the same way the inner tubes had been. There was crunching and pain as splinters of glass had been forced into his hands with each desperate pound. Poe had shouted behind him, a set of hands had grabbed his left arm and Finn had reacted instinctively. With the reflexes his Stormtrooper training had beaten into him. He had sought to eliminate the threat. And when Pava had tried to intervene he’d broken her too.

He’s peripherally aware that the breathless sobbing sound is coming from him. Snap has moved back slightly and through a brief gap in the sifting bodies around Poe he can see the pilot, slack-jawed and eyes fluttering closed as Flare crumples into sleep on his chest. There’s something around his neck, something that Finn can’t quite recognise before the gap closes again. Flare’s screams go abruptly silent, and Finn feels like he’s dropped out of space into gravity so suddenly that his innards have been left behind; his insides scraped painfully bare.

Blaster fire breaks into the suspended moment. The medics are rushing to cover themselves with emergency barriers, the soldiers bringing their blasters round to bear on the new threat.

Finn’s disarmed Snap before he even begins to turn. There’s a high pitched screeching in his ears as he focuses down the barrel, shots opening the front of Stormtrooper armour into gaping chasms of burnt tissue. He’s amongst them in seconds, wrenching chestplates away to allow his knife to slip through muscle and bones and organs as he throws the blaster into the control panel, destroying the door commands and sealing his portal to Poe permanently.

Finn has always been quietly aware that he is one the best soldiers the battalion has ever had. Phasma had watched him closely, satisfaction in his achievements in the cold tone of her voice as she berated him. His hand to hand skills were impeccable, his accuracy with weapons total.

A detached amusement fills him at the thought that she probably never expected him to use those skills like this.

If there is even a chance, slim and fragile though it may be, that Poe can be saved, Finn will give it to him. Even as he feels the burn of blaster fire blister across his ribs, he does not stop. His fists find the gaps in armour every time he moves; he steals weapons from resisting fingers and turns them against their owners, splitting flesh and shattering bones. He moves like something wretched, form splintering under the simple need to destroy.

And he does destroy. He can’t find it in himself at that moment to feel any form of remorse for the broken bodies he leaves sprawled across the corridors behind him. He probably knew some of these faceless people, probably trained with them long ago. It’s quite possible he had strained friendships with some of the men and women he tears apart.

It’s only when he realises there’s no one coming to fight him that he slows down.

There’s blood splashed across most of his body now. He can’t get his fingers to move from their half-curled talons. He’s on the bridge, he notices, alarms blaring across the screens surrounding him. There’s black-clothed officers strewn across the ground around him, faces twisted into gruesome expressions of terror as they rattle and gasp in their last moments.

He can’t bring himself to regret any of it.

Cameras have been tethered to the movements of the Alliance, and Finn looks up to see his friends racing through the ship. He sees Poe immediately, his body lashed to one of the expanding stretchers the medics use.

Only it’s not his body. Flare is curled onto his chest.

Something in Finn reignites at that sight. He gasps harshly, dragging air into lungs that protest the abuse. He glances around himself, finding the panel he wants in seconds. He knows they’ll have changed his access codes, doesn’t even attempt to log into his old identity. Instead, he types in the codes of an old friend, hopes against hope that he hasn’t died or changed his codes in the time between Finn’s betrayal and now.

It’s the first time he feels anything other than numbness when the relief floods him as the console unlocks for his use. The access doesn’t grant him everything, but it grants him the most important things.

Such as the forcefields within the ship.

He barriers off every angle the Stormtroopers could use to get to Poe. Shuts down corridors and locks rooms where they still wait, fixating on their last orders since their leaders are no longer providing new ones. He lights the way for the rebels carrying Poe to the X-wings. He thwarts the troopers racing to the docking bays, watching as they race into forcefields that sizzle and crack as bodies pile up against them. There’s not much he can do against the troopers already stationed in the docking bay, but he can stop others from reinforcing them. He watches as rebel alliance soldiers dart behind cover and lay down sweeping fire as the medics race to haul Poe into one of the larger ships. Someone smartly activates the docking bay doors, trying to prevent the alliance from leaving. Finn slams into the controls, watching as the doors stutter and jam, then slowly start pulling back open under his command.

He doesn’t realise then that he uses the Force to do so, only that it needs doing.

Poe disappears into the bowels of the ship and Finn manages to tear his gaze away to catch Pava hobbling along, Snap roughly pulling her with him as they approach one of the X-wings. Finn pulls down the forcefields around the ship as Snap bundles her into the pilots seat, agony bleeding down her face as she grabs the controls and gags while punching commands into the panels. Snap jumps down and sprints for his ship, the forcefields moving around him as he grimly accepts their help, dashing across open space to reach his own escape. Stormtroopers fire angrily down on the barriers between them, the light becoming almost unbearable as Snap hauls himself up into the ship, top already closing as he gasps out orders to the R-unit in the back.

Poe’s beautiful x-wing stands alone as the alliance pulls away, barriers falling into place across the mouth of the bay as they leave.

Finn stands alone too. Watching as Poe is flown away into safety.

He hopes it’s enough, he thinks, as his eyes close and he crumples to the ground. He hopes he did enough to save Poe from having killed him in the first place.

+++++++++++

When he wakes up, it’s with a certain amount of disbelief. He never expected to wake up; expected to be killed in his sleep; the storm troopers shouldn’t have taken the chance. Instead, he finds himself slowly easing back into consciousness, aware of rigid bands around his limbs, chest and forehead. He can’t move, which is possibly the first smart thing the Order have done.

There’s a quiet hum in the back of his mind, something he doesn’t quite recognise, but knows in every fiber of his being. He blinks confusedly as he pulls back into the world, world blurring in front of him as his eyes struggle to focus.

She’s strapped down across from him. It takes a moment to realise he can feel the bonds around her as much as he can feel them around himself. He stares at her, sides heaving in medicated sleep. He knows her as intimately as he knows himself, and yet he doesn’t recognise her at all.

There’s a dark chuckle from the side of the room and Finn jerks in his restraints, desperately trying to go to her, to protect her from this new threat. Something slides into his mind and spreads dirty, cloying fingers there and he screams as agony rips through him.

Her body shudders with his, even as she stays deeply asleep.

Kylo Ren moves to block his view, a shadow that blots out everything good in the world, and Finn gasps in understanding.

He has been given his daemon. She has been returned to him. He has been stripped of the blockers and drugs that kept him from feeling her completely and she has been brought to his side. It is a gift and a horrible, damning curse all in one.

He knows that this has not been done out of any form of kindness or compassion. The quiet way Kylo Ren waits out his grasping awareness tells him everything he needs to know. The cold fingers in his head stroke gently at the delicate bond between them and Finn understands.

He can’t see it, but he can feel it in the very depths of his soul when Kylo Ren smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the end. It's a beginning and a middle but definitely not an end. It's also not what I intended to write next. There was going to be a lot between this, but I couldn't write it. And finally, I allowed this to happen first.
> 
> It's not the end. But I can't promise when the rest will come.


End file.
